“Right. And we’re assuming no one guessed about the delivery system and then put poison in the massage oil,” Perez agreed.
“Okay. That means someone is targeting these women for a reason. Any ideas?” Jordain asked.
Butler drained what was left of her soda, yawned and shut her eyes for a second. When she opened them, she looked at the clock. It was almost 11:30 p.m. Jordain didn’t even look tired, she thought. He was wide awake and ready to start brainstorming.
Detective Details they called him, only half joking, because he was obsessed with minutiae. But as often as not, that was what solved cases. Not the big, broad strokes but the infinitely small details that no one else noticed. Jordain was a perceptive man-he made it all look so easy, so possible. He was tireless and determined, and most of all, he was just. He had a heart. He balanced compassion with rationality and never wavered.
Perez was smart, too, but he wasn’t that different from everyone else. She respected him, but she didn’t look up to him. There hadn’t been many men in her life she looked up to. Perez was a good guy, but still just another guy. Jordain was the one you stuck it out for. If he said you were doing a good job, that mattered.
She yawned once more.
“Maybe you should go home, Butler. How long have you been here?” Jordain said.
“It doesn’t matter. There’s a chance those women’s computers might give up a name tonight, and if you can wait for it, I can, too.”
Tuesday Ten days remaining
Thirty-Seven
From the time Detective Jordain got the call from the hospital, it took him and Perez less than fifteen minutes to get there. Dr. Fred Klein met them on the seventh floor and briefed them. Tania was through the worst of it and was going to make a full recovery. They could talk to her for ten minutes.
Jordain sat by her bed while she slept. She was pale, but her breathing was even. Five minutes went by. Another five minutes. When she finally opened her eyes, he saw they were large and the color of the ocean during a storm. Her lips, though cracked and almost bloodless, opened to say something, but only a very faint whisper came out. He wasn’t sure, but he thought she asked him who he was.
Even in this sorry state, Jordain could tell how tempting she must have been to the men who watched her online, and before his mind went further in that direction, he said hello and introduced himself.
“Do you know where you are?” he asked.
She nodded. “I know…” She coughed. “Woke up before.” Her eyes searched the room and then blinked three times. He could read the panic. “My mother…?”
“She’s downstairs with my partner, Detective Perez. She’ll be right back. I told her I’d stay with you. You know, she’s been here since Sunday morning when you came in. She hasn’t left.”
Tania nodded and licked her lips.
“Would you like some water?”
She nodded again and he poured some from the plastic pitcher on her nightstand-the same pitcher that was in every hospital room he’d ever been in. How many times had he done this? Gone through the ritual of soothing the patient and waiting until he or she was comfortable enough so that he could ask his questions and disrupt the fragile recuperation process with the last thing the patient needed: prodding that forced him or her to relive the trauma.
While Tania was drinking her water, Perez came in.
Jordain introduced them, and Tania gave Perez a hello that sounded slightly stronger than the one she’d given Jordain. All the time, her eyes searched. “My mother?”
“I convinced her to have a little breakfast. She’s having some oatmeal. She’ll be back in about fifteen minutes.”
She nodded.
“We’d like to ask you some questions,” Jordain started. “Not too many and not for too long. Is that all right?”
“I guess so. But first will you tell me how ZaZa is? I asked the nurse but she doesn’t know who I mean.”
Perez gave Jordain a quick look that said he didn’t want to be the one to tell her.
Jordain nodded almost imperceptibly. Damn. Yes, he’d do it, but he had no idea how close the two women were. How was it going to hit her? He wished her mother had told her. Although, maybe even her mother didn’t know. If he told her, he might lose her for an hour, a few hours, a day, but he couldn’t lie to her.
The hesitation was enough for her.
“She didn’t make it, did she?”
“I’m sorry, no.”
“I already figured it out. We were both sick with the same stuff. If she was okay, even if she was as bad as I am, no one would have kept it from me. How stupid is this? Just like some dumb movie-” She stopped talking and closed her eyes. Tears rolled down her cheeks but she didn’t break down. “She died of the same thing that made me so sick, right?”
“Yes,” Jordain said.
“Do you know what it was?”
“Not yet. Not for sure. We’re doing tests. We need you to tell us what happened. Okay?”
Tania nodded, but now she was crying too hard to talk.
Thirty-Eight
I didn’t get out of my office that day until it was time to leave for my session at the Park East School. It hadn’t been snowing five minutes earlier, when I’d looked out of my window to check, but now it was coming down hard again and I didn’t have time to go back for an umbrella without risking being late. But if I didn’t find a taxi-which I doubted I would in weather this bad-and I had to walk, I’d get soaked.
Rushing inside, I grabbed one of the extra umbrellas Allison kept in a stand by her desk. She was on the phone and waved good-night to me, and then I saw Blythe coming down the steps, wrapping her scarf around her head.
“It’s bad out there,” I said as I opened the door and held it for her.
“What else is new?”
She was heading Uptown, too, she said, and so we walked to Park Avenue together, hoping we’d find a cab to share. The two of us huddled under the one small collapsible umbrella and blinked the snow out of our eyes as we forged ahead. The wind was blowing west and I had to swirl the umbrella to keep it from flying away. It wouldn’t have mattered; it wasn’t preventing the snow from stinging our cheeks and our lips.
The sidewalks were packed with that day’s fresh snowfall, which covered previous layers of both snow and ice. Walking was hazardous, and halfway down the block Blythe hit a patch of ice and started to slide. Reaching out, I grabbed her arm, and she steadied herself.
“I can’t believe how dangerous it is just walking to the corner.” She laughed and thanked me for holding on to her.
We got lucky a few minutes later when a young woman with a toddler got out of a taxi in front of an apartment building on Sixty-seventh Street.
Once we were in the cab, I told Blythe I was going as far as Eighty-eighth Street and she said she’d drop me off then. She was going all the way up to 103rd Street.
“Mount Sinai hospital? Everything all right?” I’d felt an immediate lurch of fear in the center of my stomach upon hearing the address. There wasn’t anything else up there.
“The girl who was poisoned on Saturday night-the Webcam girl-she’s there. I don’t think there’s anything I can do for her, but I wanted to go in case she needs to talk to someone.”
“Do you know her?”
“No. Not personally. But…I feel like I do.”
The taxi was warm and I was wearing a heavy coat and good, thick gloves, but I shivered. Blythe, despite her degrees and her potential as a therapist and her desire to excel in my own field, was so close to the tragedy.
As the cab crept Uptown, I told Blythe where I was going and a little bit about the sessions I was doing at the school.
“I hope you can help them,” she said earnestly.
“So do I.”
“You don’t sound as if you think you can.”